This is a fair question on the surface, but my answer is that the leadership and the actual rank and file bulk of the government are two different things. Does GWB make you mistrust the military or the USPS as institutions? Me either. My criticism of Bush is just that – critcism of Bush, not “the Government” as a whole.
FEMA, for instance, is a great organization and should not be blamed for the NO fiasco. It was Bush who fucked it up by rolling it into Homeland Security and appointing an unqualified corporate crony to run it. The remedy is to monitor the leadership, not to jetison FEMA. You could also use the military as an example. The debacle in Iraq is not an indictment of a state run miltary but of elected civilian leadership (something we have control of).
In large part because of government intervention in this industry. Government mandates and restrictions stifle choice and lead to a situation like we have in Maryland, where two companies serve 92% of the small group market. That’s a direct consequence of government policy.
Sorry, but if I don’t like my phone company, I have a wide variety of them to choose from. If I don’t like my grocery store, I can choose another. The choice is there.
No, but you can choose to go to another HMO (or you could were it not for government meddling).
No, I can choose not to buy a policy from them. I certainly cannot choose not to pay taxes to my government or not take its orders.
That’s a topic for another thread.
Exactly. I’m not talking about socialized medicine. I’m talking about government in general. You seem to think corporations have more control of us than the government does. As I pointed out (and you agreed with), the government has the power to imprison us, kill us, and take our property. Corporations do not have this power.
What does the profit motive have to do with the cost of anything? You do realize, don’t you, that a large portion of the U.S. health care industry is run by nonprofits, right?
If I don’t like my Verizon DSL service, I can choose another. If I don’t like my DirectTV, I can choose another company. I can certainly refuse to give corporations my money.
You clearly have done no research into how health care works in the U.S., have you?
I haven’t listened to Limbaugh in 15 years. My opinion on the U.S. health care industry is based on a variety of research I have done. You might want to do a little yourself, instead of relying on Michael Moore for your “facts.” Any sort of minimal reading about the U.S. health care industry would educate you that it is heavily, heavily regulated and that the government pays for a huge amount of health care already.
Medicaid works well? Again, your total lack of knowledge on this subject is apparent. People on Medicaid don’t even think it works well. It provides incredibly poor quality care for its recipients. And quite a few HMOs are nonprofit. But you knew that, right?
How is it going to be ok when a Bushette decides to roll Healthcare into Homeland Security and appointing an unqualified corporate crony to run it? Or cutting budgets (as they constantly do for Medicare and Medicaid, pushing the overburdened States to step up with funds).
Please find me one instance in the past twenty years when Medicare or Medicaid funds were cut. I’ll save you some time, since it hasn’t happened.
What happens with Medicaid is that the federal government matches state spending, often dollar for dollar. This is an entitlement program, which means that there is essentially no federal cap. In recessions, though, the states find that their state revenue declines and thus they cannot continue funding ever-increasing Medicaid expenditures. So states cry for more money from Washington. But federal funding for Medicaid has not been reduced at any time.
But they DO have that power because that’s who the government works for. Cheney and Bush ARE the corporations. They started a war for Halliburton and the oil industry.
This sounds like complete nonsense. I’d be very interested in hearing more about how it could possibly be true that government interference is responsible for the power and monopolies of HMO’s.
It isn’t Diogenes that has a total lack of knowledge on the subject.
From the Kaiser Family Foundation
See also Medicaid: Four Decades of Success for a review of the success of the Medicaid program.
Actually, the enunciation of ‘Gupta’ you refer to was included in the clip BrainGlutton linked to as well. Still doesn’t sound mocking to me. Obviously you disagree. But keep your snide comments about intellectual contortion to yourself. I’ve given you my honest opinion, as have several in this thread.
Sorry, my mistake - the protesters and frequent news articles seem to normally blame Bush, and I saw no reason to suspect that he’s raising Medicaid budget to keep pace with inflation.
So now, instead of just an incompetent Federal Government, would this system follow the utopian Medicaid model and have 51 different ways to screw up?
While I disagree with everything else you’ve said in this thread, I agree with this. A large part of the Federal bureaucracy is by and large not run directly by the President. The SEC, USPS board of governors, the Federal Reserve board et cetera all have Presidential appointees in key positions but they have a lot of institutionally and internally created regulations and operating practices and on the day-to-day level they operate independently of the politician that happens to sit in the White House.
I don’t view, “X President sucks, do you want him running your healthcare system?” as a valid counter point to government-controlled medicine because many government agencies exist in the United States that are not extensively controlled by the politician who happens to be sitting in the White House.
It’s very close to the end (during the goodbyes, in fact).
He seemed pissed off to me, not a raving lunatic. What behavior made him a raving lunatic?
The Supreme Court ruled a while ago that health insurance is not involved in interstate commerce and thus every state has the power to set a variety of regulations on what type of health insurance is sold within its borders for the individual and small group markets (companies and organizations that self-insure are not subject to this regulation). That means that in a state like Maryland the government has imposed a variety of mandated services insurance must cover (in virto fertilization, for one, regardless of whether or not you want or need such a service) and the state health care commission has set up a variety of restrictions on copayments, deductibles, and the like. The result has been fewer and fewer companies selling policies in our state. That means less consumer choice. It also means that the few companies that continue to offer policies either cannot (due to government directives) or will not (due to lack of any competitive pressure) that are tailored to meet the need of consumers.
I’d put my knowledge of Medicaid up against his any time.
The Kaiser survey means pretty much nothing. Yes, people view it as an “important” program. That doesn’t mean it provides good health care. And so what if people needed health care and were eligible for it, they would sign up? Yes, I suppose if I needed health care and were eligible for a free government program, I would do so rather than continue to suffer. That still does not mean Medicaid provides good quality care.
A more telling survey statistic is this one, by the Commonwealth Fund:
The full report can be found here: http://www.cmwf.org/usr_doc/edwards_erosion.pdf
Special interest groups often mislead the public about federal spending, so be skeptical of their claims. Bush actually has little affect on Medicaid spending. Medicaid is an entitlement program and as such its spending goes up or down depending on the number of people who use Medicaid and the type of services they use. Policymakers can affect the rate of spending by limiting eligibility and the like, but when this has been done (in 2005, for example), it merely reduced the rate that the program was increasing.
That report shows that the outllok is not so positive for employer sponsored insurance.
True, but I’m not here defending employer-based insurance. In fact, I’m not here defending our current health insurance system at all.
now that is ridiculous.
Your tone is uncalled for.
The clip BrainGlutton provided in the OP does not provide the comment in question. It ends seconds before Moore says Gupta’s name in a mocking tone. I provided a clip upthread and did my best to point you to the correct frame.
Telling of what? That working age (19 to 64 year old) Americans don’t want to be on Medicaid? That has no bearing on whether Medicaid has been successful or whether it is well-liked by those who have some experience with it. The population of that survey is highly unlikely to inform you of anything on those points.
As a reminder, here is your assertion.
You seem to have forgotten the point you were so sure about. Can you in fact support it at all?
…
It certainly refutes your attempt to use the Kaiser Foundation study to show that Medicaid is wildly popular.
Of course. Here’s a good summary of some of the literature on it (and yes it is from the Heritage Foundation, but feel free to go to the link and check out the footnotes yourself):
"Once Medicaid beneficiaries gain access to the health care system, they receive inferior quality of care compared to patients with private insurance.
For example, patients with non-ST segment elevation acute coronary syndromes (NSTSE ACS), a form of heart attack, benefit significantly from innovative therapeutic approaches, including early invasive management strategies. These measures have now been incorporated into the guidelines of the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association. According to a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, however, Medicaid patients with NSTSE ACS were less likely to receive evidence-based therapies and had worse outcomes (including increased mortality rates) than patients who had private insurance as the primary payer. This study found that these differences in care and outcomes persisted after adjusting for clinical characteristics (associated illness), socioeconomic factors (education and income), and the type of center where patients received treatment. In other words, the most important predictor of treatment and outcome in the study was whether the patient had Medicaid or private insurance.
Moreover, the data also show that Medicaid beneficiaries face more difficulties scheduling adequate and timely follow-up care after initial treatment for an illness than those with private insurance."
You know… let’s not digress into a generalized critique of capitalism and socialism. I don’t think we’re using the terms in the same way anyway. I’ll stick to saying that your claim that Americans are brainwashed that capitalism = good doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.
So, let’s remove the profit motive from agriculture, housing, clothing and transportation. Those are all necessary services, too. You’re trying to do an end run around the debate, though, by declaring healthcare a necessary state service, when that hasn’t been established. The military is a natural state monopoly (which is different than being “socialized”) as we’ve seen in country after country where various standing armies are allowed or tolerated (witness Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, etc.). And the postal service was widely criticized before it was partially privatized.
But let’s get to understand exactly how the profit motive is removed… Can I open a for-profit clinic if I want to? Can drug companies make a profit off of the drugs they manufacture? Can I sell diagnostic equipment for a profit?
OK, then I don’t see healthcare in that category. End of debate.